


Toulouse!

by DreamingPagan



Series: Graced [3]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Crack Fic, Gen, M/M, and Charles Vane is bored, and likes to lay eggs on my bed, based off adventures in minecraft, i guess, in which farming adventures are had, she's a troublesome chicken, specifically I have a chicken named Toulouse that escaped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 00:09:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13306251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamingPagan/pseuds/DreamingPagan
Summary: Thomas is not a farmer. James is not a chicken-wrangler, and Miranda is seriously considering a vacation.





	Toulouse!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sirenswhisper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sirenswhisper/gifts).



> Credit for the prompt goes to Penflicks, and the ten minutes I spent trying to coax a chicken back to our Minecraft fort.

“That bird,” James says, “is taunting me.”

“Toulouse,” Thomas says, panting, hands on his knees, “is a chicken. Chickens can’t taunt!”

His husband looks both concerned and, somehow, irritated - James privately suspects that he will be hearing later tonight about the lapse in attention that has allowed Toulouse the chicken (who is most assuredly taunting him) to escape the enclosure. 

“They can, however, end up in the soup pot,” Hennessey calls from the porch stairs, and James tries not to snort with laughter. Thomas turns. 

“We’re not making soup out of her!” he protests. “Toulouse! Toulouse, come back here!”

There is a squawk - and then the hen named Toulouse goes flapping past, and Hal Gates lies in the dirt, face red, his hands full of empty air. He stands with great dignity, and James attempts not to laugh at the dirt and what might well be chicken shit covering his front.

“If that bloody hen slips my grasp one more time-” he starts to say, and James throws him a warning glance. Thomas, gentle soul that he can be, given the right circumstances, is not a farmer. He is not accustomed to treating animals as livestock, and thus, they find themselves in their current circumstances - namely, chasing a chicken around the property, attempting to get her back to her pen without harming her. Gates subsides, and James looks toward the wayward chicken, wondering what the odds are that he can get another chicken, name it Toulouse, and privately make sure that this particular trouble-making fowl causes no more trouble.

He looks back to Thomas. Unlikely, he decides - Thomas, somehow, knows all of their chickens by name, markings, and habits, and he is unlikely to find another chicken that likes to escape her pen, fly in through the open window, and leave feathers on his bed from time to time.

“I can help you with that, if you’re so inclined,” a voice says from beyond the fence, and James turns to find a young man with long brown hair, a pair of light green eyes, and a grin that spells trouble lounging against the fence. “I know this trick,” he says, as he steps over the fence one leg at a time, “with a throwing knife. If you do it right -”

The chicken squawks, and runs at Charles Vane with Thomas hot on her heels, and for a moment, James believes disaster is imminent, but in the wake of the burst of feathers that is Toulouse, Vane sits in the dirt, looking somewhat bemused, watching while Thomas runs after the clucking hen with increased worry on his face. James offers Vane a hand up, and sighs.

“If I’d wanted the damn bird dead, she’d have been shot an hour ago,” he grumbles. Vane snorts, and James turns away, heading after Toulouse, who is now sitting in a tree, clucking contentedly. 

“Room on that step?” Vane asks behind him. James hears shifting, and he knows - he knows - that if he turns around, he will find his father and Vane sitting on the step, and the crunch of the apple in Vane’s hand causes him to turn back around. The scene is as he has imagined - the two of them sit, watching the proceedings with amusement, and he scowls. Vane holds out the apple, an innocent look on his face.

“Want a bite?” he asks, and James’ scowl grows thunderous. Hennessey, however, reaches forward, grabs the apple, and takes the offered bite before giving it back, giving James what he can only call a shit-eating grin. Neither of them budges.

“Traitors,” James mutters. He can hear Vane’s barked laughter, and Hennessey’s quieter chuckle.

“Toulouse!” Thomas scolds. “You are a chicken. That is a tree. How on earth do you expect to lay eggs there?” 

“Bloody birds like trees,” Gates says, exasperated. “You’ll never get her out now. Fucking hell -”

“Toulouse! Chick chick chick chick, come along!”

He’s not sure, in retrospect, why it is that it takes Miranda to think of luring her in with food.

“Toulouse!” she calls, spilling seed over the ground, and to James’ bemusement, the chicken’s head perks up. She stands, and flaps her wings - and hits the ground seemingly at a run, heading straight for Miranda, and the seemingly delicious millet scattered around her. Miranda bends at the waist, picks the chicken up, and carries her firmly back to her enclosure, depositing her within to the sound of disgruntled clucking. She spreads more seed over the ground, and then turns to James and, behind him, Thomas and Gates.

“Don’t look at me,” Gates says. “The only thing I’ve ever had to do with chickens is eating them. I’m no farmer.” 

She looks to Vane, who shrugs and gestures with the knife he had offered to use, and Hennessey, beside him, simply smiles, offering no comment. Miranda does not seem to need one - she has long since discovered that her father-in-law has a wicked sense of humor.

“James?” she asks, and he can feel his face redden.

“I -” he starts, and then looks to the ground. “My grandmother had chickens,” he admits, and he can almost hear Miranda lift her eyebrow. “It was a long time ago!” he protests. “I was still a boy and she tended them because they used to come running at  _ me _ full tilt!”

He can feel his face redden. It’s all perfectly true - his grandmother, bless her, had taken pity on him and, with some amount of perplexity, taken over feeding the chickens. He remembers his grandfather protesting at first, and the fierce old woman James’ grandmother had been scolding him, insisting, 

_ “Darby McGraw, he’s five, he’ll have time to learn later!”  _

And he has. Toulouse doesn’t frighten him a bit - although he’s less sanguine about the look on Miranda’s face. 

“You were scared - of chickens?” she asks, and James gives her a slightly sheepish expression. 

“I panicked,” he mumbles, and attempts to ignore the sound of Gates’ snickering. The chickens cluck gently beside them, and Thomas leans over the fence, gently petting the safely returned Toulouse. 

“No soup pot for you,” he says, satisfied, and James raises his gaze again just in time to see Miranda roll her eyes fondly.

“One day,” she says, “I’m going to indulge myself and leave this house for several days running, and when that occurs, I will probably be summoned back by the Pastor, no doubt informing me that the chickens are running wild, the horses are roaming free, and the entirety of my very strange family are attempting to live off root vegetables and grog,” she says. “Mr. Gates - please tell me that between our husbands, one of them has managed to retain the common sense to put the cover over the well so that I may at least be certain I can heat water for a bath and have tea without fear of what’s fallen down it?” 

“I certainly hope so,” Gates says, looking down at his filth-covered shirt. “Eirnin, love - come and give us a hand with this, will you?” 

Hennessey rises, and meets Gates at the door. He wrinkles his nose when Gates leans in for a kiss. 

“I think not,” he says. “Go and wash - thoroughly - and then we will discuss the likelihood of my lips touching yours.”

“I haven’t got it on my face!” James hears Gates arguing as they enter the house. “Look, I’ve - oh damn, alright, it is on my face, isn’t it.”

“If you would shave off the mutton chops, you might be able to feel what is or isn’t on your face-”

James turns back to Miranda and winces. 

“I didn’t fall in the muck,” he points out hopefully, and Miranda rolls her eyes again, then pulls him in for a kiss. Behind him, he can still hear Thomas talking to the chickens, and he is reasonably certain that Vane has gotten up and wandered off. He turns - and finds the younger man still sitting on the stoop, eating what remains of the apple.

“Got nowhere else to be,” he says with a shrug. “You don’t like chickens?” 

James does not dignify that with an answer, merely snorts, and moves toward the well. They could all do with a bath.

“Help me with the water and I’ll tell you about the time my grandfather got bitten by a pig,” he answers.


End file.
